This invention relates to a sewing and stacking apparatus for stitching a folded tape on a series of sewing mediums such as crotch panels of knitted or woven men's briefs, cutting the folded tape and stacking the sewing mediums.
As shown in FIG. 1, a men's brief comprises right and left front panels A and B, a rear panel C and a crotch panel 1. The hems of the above panels which require reinforcement, such as the hem of the crotch panel 1 defining the front slit, have a folded tape 2 stitched thereon.
As shown in FIG. 2, the folded tape 2 is stitched on upper portions of a plurality of crotch panels 1 which are arranged appropriately apart from each other. The folded tape 2 is formed by folding a lengthy cloth along two or more lines running in parallel in a longitudinal direction thereof in the manner shown in FIG. 3. In this specification, the lengthy cloth is folded along two lines into two side portions L and N and a central portion M; and the three portions are stacked in such a manner that the side portion N is interposed between the side portion L and the central portion M. Each crotch patch 1 is inserted between the side portion L and the central portion M, wherein the folded tape 2 is stitched on the crotch panel 1 with two to four pairs of threads T.
Conventionally, after the folded tape 2 is stitched on the crotch panels 1 by a conventional sewing machine as shown in FIG. 4, the folded tape 2 is cut manually and the separated crotch panels 1 are laminated one after another again manually to be assembled with the other panels A through C.
The above conventional method, by which stitching, cutting and stacking are done separately and the last two processes are left to manual work, contributes an extreme inefficiency of the whole process from stitching to stacking.